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Does High-Stakes Testing Increase Cultural Capital among Low-Income and Racial Minority Students? Won-Pyo Hong Peter Youngs Michigan State University Citation: Hong, W.-P., & Youngs, P. (2008). Does high-stakes testing increase cultural capital among low-income and racial minority students? Education Policy Analysis Archives, 16(6). Retrieved [date] from http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v16n6/. Abstract This article draws on research from Texas and Chicago to examine whether high-stakes testing enables low-income and racial minority students to acquire cultural capital. While students' performance on state or district tests rose after the implementation of high-stakes testing and accountability policies in Texas and Chicago in the 1990s, several studies indicate that these policies seemed to have had deleterious effects on curriculum, instruction, the percentage of students excluded from the tests, and student dropout rates. As a result, the policies seemed to have had mixed effects on students' opportunities to acquire embodied and institutionalized cultural capital. These findings are consistent with the work of Shepard (2000), Darling-Hammond (2004a), and others who have written of the likely negative repercussions of high-stakes testing and accountability policies. Keywords: cultural capital, high-stakes testing, accountability, K-12 schooling in the U.S. ¿Pueden los exámenes de alto riesgo aumentar el capital cultural entre los estudiantes de bajos ingresos y de minorías raciales? Resumen Este artículo se basa en investigaciones hechas en Texas y Chicago para examinar si los exámenes de alto riesgo permiten a estudiantes de bajos ingresos y de minorías raciales adquirir capital cultural. Si bien el desempeño en pruebas estatales o distritales de los estudiantes de Texas y Chicago en los noventas mejoro después de la aplicación de los exámenes de alto riesgo asociados a políticas de acontabilidad escolar, varios estudios indican que estas políticas parecen haber tenido efectos nocivos sobre los planes de estudio, la instrucción, el porcentaje de estudiantes excluidos de las pruebas, y el índice de abandono escolar. Como resultado de ello, las políticas parecen haber tenido resultados mixtos en los estudiantes en cuanto a la oportunidad de adquirir cultural capital tanto del tipo institucional como corporal. Estos resultados son consistentes con los trabajos de Shepard (2000), Darling-Hammond (2004a), y otros que han escrito sobre las probables repercusiones negativas de los exámenes de alto riesgo asociados a políticas de acontabilidad escolar. Palabras clave: capital cultural, exámenes de alto riesgo, políticas acontabilidad escolar, la educación K-12 en los EE.UU. Access this article in PDF format.   Readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this abstract and the associated article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and Education Policy Analysis Archives, it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. All other uses must be approved by the author(s) or EPAA. EPAA is published jointly by the Mary Lou Fulton College of Education at Arizona State University and the College of Education at the University of South Florida. Articles are indexed by H.W. Wilson & Co. Please contribute commentary at http://epaa.info/wordpress/ and send errata notes to Sherman Dorn (epaa-editor@shermandorn.com).